Cheon Il Guk

Cheonju Pyeonghwa Tongil Guk [천주 평화 톤길 국] (the Nation of Cosmic Peace and Unity), or simply, Cheon Il Guk. The words Cheon Il refers to the singular reality encompassing both heaven and earth. Cheon Il Guk implies that two people unite and form a nation. (360- 086, 2001.11.12)

True Families: Gateway to Heaven

True Families: Gateway to Heaven

This compilation of True Father’s words was designated as one of the eightgreat textbooks. True Parents gave it as an encapsulation of theteachings that all people need to apply in their daily lives.

CHAPTER ONE

The Family is the Central Model for theKingdom of Heaven

Section I. The central model for all beings

Each of us exists in a world of space and position. We need those who are higher and lower, those to the right and left, and those in front of us and behind us. Our position is determined in this way. Whether we properly engage in relationships with those higher and lower, to the right and left, and in front and at back will determine the various roles we fulfill in life.

The same formula applies whether we are dealing with relationships of higher and lower, right and left, or front and back, or with issues within our family, nation and world. According to this same pattern of higher and lower, right and left, and front and back with the individual at the center, a family consist of the relationships of parents and children, husband and wife, and brothers and sisters.

The same also applies within a nation. With the leader of the nation at the center, all families embrace the civilizations of East and West and of North and South, and then embrace all the people of the world as their brothers and sisters. This will substantiate a family model on the world level.

This model applies to everyone. Each of you stands at the center of your model, your family, which then expands to the nation, world, heaven and earth, and finally to God. Everyone has the desire to be the center of the universe, and everyone has the potential to fulfill that desire. In this way the concept of the family can be compared to the core of the universe. If we think of heaven as the parents, then earth represents the children. When considering East and West, East symbolizes the man and West the woman. So when a woman marries, she goes to wherever her husband is located. This can be compared to the way the West comes to have the same position as the East when it reflects the light from the sun.

The same is true with sibling relationships. When the oldest sibling begins a task, the younger siblings start to help. People need to be in a parent-child relationship, a conjugal relationship and a sibling relationship. In other words, these three relationships must meet at one point. There must be just one central point. There cannot be different central points for higher and lower, right and left, and front and back.

If the central points are different, the relationships of higher and lower, right and left, and front and back will be off balance. Higher and lower, right and left, front and back, and the common central point add up to the number seven. To form the number seven in this way means to be a family that is one in perfect true love with God at the center, a family in which all these elements form a complete spherical shape bringing harmony and unity. From this perspective, it makes sense that we often use the phrase “lucky seven.”

As long as true love never changes, this central core will rotate forever without changing and the true family ideal will be realized. Also, because everything is connected to the core, each of the seven positions, starting with the core, will possess equal value. If the grandfather wants something, the grandchild will not be against it, and the son and daughter will want it as well. Three generations will share a desire for the same thing. The grandfather and grandmother, husband and wife, and sons and daughters all will align with the center.

In terms of such love, we say that parents and children are one in their relationship and are of one body, that husbands and wives are one in their relationship and are of one body, and that siblings are one in their relationship and are of one body. They are one body. How can we say that these relationships make us one body? It is in terms of the true love of God, the center of love. With true love at the center, parents and children become one, husband and wife become one, and brothers and sisters all become one. In this way, all come to have equal value.

Section 2. A place to experience the love of the universe

What is the universe? Everything in the created world is designed as a study aid to help God’s beloved sons and daughters discover and understand the ideal of love. This is why everything exists in reciprocal relationships.

Even minerals interact in relationships of subject and object partners. The same is true with atoms. Protons and electrons also interact in relationships of subject and object partners. Without such interaction, they cannot continue to exist. Without* motion, there is no permanence or continued existence. The universe is a world created in a way in which its central point can be reached only through human beings.

What did I say about the universe? It is an expansion of the family. If you look at a family that has realized the ideal of love fully, it has higher, middle and lower (parents, husband and wife, and children), right and left, and front and back. This is the basic rule. So when we talk about higher and lower, we refer to the parents and children; when we talk about right and left, we refer to the husband and wife; and when we talk about front and back, we refer to the siblings.

What enables all these to become as one? It cannot be done with power, knowledge or money. What can do it, then? It is true love. This is an unmistakable truth. Otherwise the family cannot become spherical in shape.

What is the significance of higher, middle and lower in the family? They are study aids for love. We are supposed to put these into practice when we go out of the family and into the wider community.

How are we supposed to love? Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself’ What did he mean? It may seem unclear. He meant, when you go out into the world and meet an old man, you treat him as you would your own grandfather. Treat people as you would your own father, your own mother or your own son. This is what we ought to do when we are out in the world.

The world can be compared to an exhibition hall filled with people, with each person representing higher, middle and lower, front and back, or right and left. The world is an exposition of all the different types of human beings. If you can love everyone with such love, God will dwell with you in the midst of that love.

What is the kingdom of heaven? It is when you are able to love the people of the world as you love your own family. People who do this are citizens of the kingdom of heaven. Your grandfather and grandmother, your father and mother, your spouse, your siblings, and your children form four generations. What are these four generations? They are the family that is the study guide for you to deeply experience love, the true love of the universe, as citizens of the kingdom of heaven. The family is the foundation that serves as the study guide to help you learn.

We cannot live without learning the love of the universe. God has prepared textbooks and scriptures that teach us this way: “Love your grandfather and grandmother. Your grandfather and grandmother on earth are sent as representatives of the grandfathers and grandmothers in the spirit world. If you love them, I will credit you with having loved them all.” This is God’s pledge.

God also tells us, “When you show exceptional love for your father and mother, it is because you hold them to be guides and models to be loved as representatives of the countless number of fathers and mothers in the world, so I will credit you with having loved all fathers and mothers. Also, when you as a man love a woman, I will consider that a man representing all men in the world has loved a woman representing all women in the world.”

God then says: “Since you have loved your sons and daughters, I will credit you with having loved all sons and daughters.” The family is where we can be trained to do this.

We are trained to love the world through a process that relies on scripture. When a person who has received this training is asked, “Are you ready now to go out into the world and love the grandfathers and grandmothers of the world as you would your own?” and the person answers, “Yes,” this person is capable of saving the world.

Section 3. A training ground to enter the kingdom of love God’s Will is to realize the kingdom of love. In other words, God’s Will is to develop and globalize the ideal world of love. Thus the family is the training ground where people earn credits, all the way from an elementary school certificate, to a bachelor’s degree, and finally a doctoral degree.

Expand the family, and you have the world. Look closely at the world. This is a world where grandfathers and grandmothers live, a world where adults like your uncles and aunts live, a world where people like your elder brothers and elder sisters live, a world where young people live, and a world where children live. So this world is a place where people of all ages—old people, middle-aged people, young adults and children—live together as one family, a family of great dimensions and a vast number of people.

The family is the smallest unit in the kingdom of heaven. It serves as a training center and a study guide. It has all levels of people: grandparents, parents, husband and wife, and siblings. Each of these levels can be expanded to include people in the world at large who are of similar age. This expansion encompasses all humanity. Only a family that loves all humanity as much as it does its own members, in whom the parents live for the sake of the world as much as they do for their own sons and daughters, can inherit the kingdom of heaven. This is an amazing fact. The special right to inherit all the power and authority of heaven and earth created by God is derived from this.

The family is the textbook of love that lets us obtain the right to be registered in the palace of peace in the kingdom of heaven after we die. So the family is a training ground of love. The extension of this family is the world. This is a world that resembles the grandfather of the family, a world that resembles the grandmother, a world that resembles the father and mother, and a world that resembles the son and daughter. Expand the family, and you have the world.

So if you can love the people of the whole world as much as you love your family, as much as you love God with your family at the center, then this will become a straight road leading to the kingdom of heaven. This is why the first commandment is, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”

The second is, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” If you love God and love humanity, everything will be realized. If you cannot do this, any spiritual training you may have will be of no use. No matter how great a religious person’s spiritual discipline may be, that person will be unsuccessful if he or she does not know how to love God, humankind and the universe.

The family is meant to provide the formula course that trains us to experience love that encapsulates the whole universe, so we can go out and express that love to the whole world. The training ground you were meant to inherit, where you experience this kind of love, is the family where your mother and father raised you.

If you love your parents and your children more than you do your spouse, if you love all humanity and even God more than you do your spouse, everything will be realized. This doesn’t mean that you abandon your spouse. If you love everyone this way, everyone who has received your love will love your spouse. Is anything more glorious than this? If you want to love your spouse, this is how you do it.

Section 4. A textbook for the heavenly kingdom

What kind of good fortune does a person in the child’s position receive? They inherit the good fortune of the grandparents and parents. Why do we need grandparents? It is because they represent the past. Grandparents represent the living history of the past. Parents represent the present, and children symbolize the future. The family encompasses East and West and also North and South. It is the center of the whole. It is the center of the grandparents, the center of the parents, the center of the children and the center of God; in every case true love is the center. When you love your grandparents and respect them, you do this to inherit the past completely and to learn about the world gone by.

From your parents you learn about the present, and by loving your children you learn about the future. What do you inherit through your grandfather and grandmother, and father and mother? You inherit true love. You are saying: “Our grandfather and grandmother are old, and they are as one in true love, and our parents have become as one, too. So let’s be the same way and inherit the future.”

Unless we become an absolute true family, we cannot inherit the future. When we look at the three generations of a family, it is like looking at the universe. The love of the universe exists in a true family that represents the present and future. In the animal world as well, the male loves the female and the female the male. This is a textbook teaching us about the love of the universe.

If the grandmother is away, there is a feeling of uneasiness. The same is true when the grandfather is not there. It is the same for each of them. Only when both are together can they move just as they are into the kingdom of heaven. Only when the grandparents, father and mother, and children are all there can the family go into the kingdom of heaven. The person who has loved the true grandparents, the true parents, the true children, the true family, the true nation and the true universe can enter the kingdom of heaven. The model and textbook for the kingdom of heaven is the true family.

The family is a study guide that enables us to establish the kingdom of heaven. It is a textbook created by Heaven. No matter where you may be in the world, if you can love every old man you see, as you would love your own grandfather, you will go to the kingdom of heaven. If you can love everyone you meet of your parents’ generation just as you would love your own parents, you will be welcomed everywhere. It will be the same in any country. If you are like this you will face no boundaries, even when you go to the spirit world.

If you have a heart that thinks of all the young people of world as your own sons and daughters, you will be able to travel freely within the kingdom of heaven, even if there are twelve gates of pearl and four directional quadrants. The family is a study guide that shows us how to connect ourselves to the kingdom of heaven. When we apply this to the nation, we become patriots. When we apply it to the world, we become saints. When we apply it with heaven and earth at the center, we become God’s sons and daughters; that is, His divine sons and daughters. This is a desire shared by every person.

You must be able to embrace the sons and daughters, as well as the grandsons and granddaughters, of all races. You must stand in a position where you, as a true parent with God’s true love, are the owner of a family who has loved all the world’s people. You can enter the kingdom of heaven only when you stand in a position to represent the standard of a family of true love, through a relationship with the original parents who have God’s true love at their center.

Section 5. Bringing together the love of three generations The family is able to encompass past history, the present era and the future. The ultimate point that God has sought for six thousand years is the family that is connected through true love and united in true love.

Everything that exists comes under the dominion of true love. We would not want to cut ourselves off from a relationship of love that is absolutely true. The original mission given to Adam and Eve at the time of creation was to establish such a family.

God did not want Adam and Eve to remain merely an individual man and an individual woman. He looked forward to the family they would form through their union. This is God’s primary purpose in creating men and women. It is only when we establish true families, and when we live with a sense of fulfillment within true families centered on God’s love, that we will be able to enter the kingdom of heaven without any problem. This is the only way we can transcend this world.

To form the family realm of love you must be absolute. The grandparents must be able to represent the past, the husband and wife must be able to represent the present, and the children must be able to represent the future. When we truly love people from each age group we allow God, through us, to relate to all of humankind. With this kind of love, husband and wife and children, having become as one body, are able to represent the cosmos; they may hold up their love as an example for others to follow and tell their descendants to follow their path. The place where they can make such statements, both to themselves and to others, the place where the heart of heaven is communicated, is the homeland of the heart that will be remembered by all of heaven and earth.

What has God been seeking all this time? He has not been seeking a subject partner, but rather an ideal object partner. God has been looking for those who resemble Him and possess the inner and outer aspects of the world that He created. What is the starting point that leads to such a result? It is the family. Nothing represents the cosmos better than the family. To be one with our parents is to bring the past and present together. We love the past by loving our parents; we love the present by loving our husband or wife; and we love the future by loving our children. Thus we experience the love of three generations. The core unit where these three kinds of love are concentrated is the family.

Then where does life in the kingdom of heaven begin? It is in the family. It does not unfold in some other place. The kingdom of heaven is nothing more than a three-dimensional expansion of the family; it does not exist separately from the family. So when you embrace your husband or wife, you ought to think of this as creating the union of all men and all women in the world. Only in this way can families set the condition for having loved all humanity. This is the path you need to follow in your lives. To love your parents is to connect past history with the present era; it is to pave a road that will let God come to you.

This is the reason why you must love your parents. To love your parents is to connect everything in the past to yourself as an inhabitant of the present, thus bringing together the past and the present so that they become one. Also, loving your own children is to connect the present reality with the future. Unification Thought is the philosophy that extols such love and teaches how it can be practiced throughout eternity.

Section 6. A training ground of the heart

We cannot live separately from the heart. Even if you were the president of a country or possessed all the authority in the world, you could not live without a place to express the joy in your heart. The desires of your heart would not be fulfilled through the people under your command, through your ministers of government, or through your followers. Only in your family could you experience such fulfillment. When you return to your family, you and your spouse feel joy through each other and through your children. You ought to be proud of this. This joy can be experienced only directly, not secondhand.

The same is true for God. Even if He were to restore the whole world, without a family He could not feel joy. So we must have families.

In the family, parents are at the center. In educational institutions that represent society, teachers have to be at the center. Your parents raised you from the time you were breastfeeding and helped you develop physically and emotionally. What is school, then? It is a place where you are trained for your future life in society. If the family is the training ground of the emotions, then school is the place where you can practice and train for your future life in society.

However, society is not the ultimate end. It all comes back to the nation, and the nation has a leader. Why is it that people want to see the president of a nation and to be near him? Once people have learned all they can in the family and then in society, they have a desire to go on to the next level.

The president represents the fruit of the third stage, following the stages of formation and growth. Once a seed is planted, it begins a cyclical process by dividing. Later it comes together again to produce a flower and bear fruit. In the same way, schools need to raise people up who will become important pillars of society, talented people who are needed by the nation.

What is the purpose of our studies in school? It is training. The school is a place for learning and experimenting. During training you are not in the actual situation. It is a preparation stage. Be sure to prepare well.

What is the family? It is the place in which to train the heart. You train your heart with love at the center. In school you learn to relate to others with affection, as you would your own siblings. In the nation, too, you can then relate to others with affection. The education you receive from your parents will be important for you in school and in the nation.

Parents have to pass on everything having to do with the heart to their children. They need to create a foundation of heart for their children, and teach their children to live as they have lived, giving specific guidance on how to live in the family, in society and in the nation.

A family is not necessarily good just because it has a nice house in an affluent neighborhood. Conversely, even if a family may live in a humble house in a poor neighborhood, it will be a good family if it provides peace and love to all its members. In this family, parents and children will have a relationship of heart that urges them to live for each other. This family will be the original homeland of our dreams. It will be the source of our motivation in all that we do in life. This means it will be the basis for determining our happiness in life.

Section 7. The eternal original hometown

The family is a good place. Why is it good? It is good because my father and mother are there. It is a good place because my elder brother and elder sister are there. It is a good place because my younger brother and younger sister are there, and it is a good place because all my relatives are there. This is why every human being feels a yearning for his or her original homeland. People feel more deeply about their hometown than they do about their nation. A Korean will love the nation of Korea and want to live in Korea. Then where is the place to which he will yearn to return, even when he is in Korea? It is his hometown. Our hometown!

Then how can we describe our hometown? It is a place where our hearts are lifted up in their entirety, in four directions and in three dimensions. What is that heart? It is that which binds us in love. Above us we are bound to our father and mother; to our left and right we are bound to our spouse; and below us we are bound to our sons and daughters. Then we are bound in love to our relatives in these three dimensions. This is the heart of the original homeland.

People value the point of origin of their happiness, where true love is at the center, more than anything else. This is the reason they cannot help but feel a yearning for their original homeland. Then where is God’s original homeland? Where do you think God’s original homeland is on the planet Earth? This is a question we need to consider.

If God is the God of love, He surely must have prepared a starting point on earth where He could reside. So where is this starting point? To answer this question, we need to understand how God prepared that starting point.

What kind of place can become the starting point of the original homeland where God’s family can come to exist? This must be the place where a son of God dwells who truly understands that God is his Parent. In other words, it is a place where there is a son, God’s son, who can be a receptacle for all of God’s love. This is also the place where such a daughter dwells. It is a place where such a son and a daughter of God marry and form a family.

Then who will be in the original homeland? All the people you miss ought to be there. Your parents need to be there and your brothers and sisters need to be there. And the people you have wanted to see need to be there. These are not people you would want to see just for a moment. They are people you could be happy to be with for eternity. This is the type of environment that we have to establish. This is the kingdom of heaven that religions predict will eventually come about.

We long for our original homeland, because this is where we find the people who are closest to us: our parents, our brothers and sisters, and our relatives. These people will always guide us. Whenever we visit, they will welcome us just as they did in the past. When we face difficulty, they will show sympathy, console us and receive us with joy. It is important to realize, however, that although you may return to your original homeland with a heart of longing, if people do not welcome you on your arrival, then your intense heart of longing will vanish and you will turn back feeling deep regret. You need to have people there who will welcome you.

Section 8. Completing the cosmos-centered philosophy All things start from one, divide into many, and ultimately come together again as something larger. In other words, one divides into many and then unites again as one. From there, it divides again and is integrated into something even larger. This process is repeated continuously.

Families also come to exist through this process of integration, and the structure of the family never changes. The family is where the relationship of husband and wife is established, the place where one man and one woman become as one. The clan brings families together as one, and the tribe is a place that brings the clans together as one. Tribes combine to form one nation. The family, however, is always at the center. The horizontal expansion of humanity comes about based on the family.

This is why no society can do without the family. If families cannot be restored, the world cannot be restored. The next step is to fulfill the cosmos-centered ideal through these families. The cosmos encompasses heaven and earth. Heaven and earth can be compared to a person’s mind and body. Mind and body must become one.

Just as a subject partner needs an object partner, one man needs one woman. The union of a man and a woman leads to a family. God’s foundation of love will not be attained unless such a family is at the center.

The “cosmos-centered philosophy” is a teaching that promotes the unity of mind and body, the formation of families as God’s main body of love, and the connection between the physical world and the spirit world through these families. The character ju (fg) in cheon-ju (cosmos) refers to a house. That is why we use the term “cosmos-centered philosophy.” The cosmos is a combination of the incorporeal world and the corporeal world.

What does this have to do with us? Everyone needs a family. If you cannot be as one in your family, you will have nothing to do with the cosmos-centered philosophy. The family serves as the final standard for completing the cosmos-centered philosophy. Those who cannot sing songs of peace and happily praise their families will be miserable, whether they are on earth or in the spirit world.

From where does the task of bringing about the kingdom of heaven begin? It begins in our families. Then what kind of teaching must we have? It is the family-centered ideal. In the term cheon-ju ju-eui (cosmos-centered philosophy), cheon means heaven and ju means house, so this is referring to the “philosophy of the heavenly home.” Only then does the meaning of cheon-ju (cosmos) become clear.

God’s Word, throughout the sixty-six books of the Bible, is an expression of His earnest desire for the ideal family. Then what is the earnest desire of every man? It is to have an ideal wife. Also, every person born as a woman has an earnest desire to have an ideal husband. A woman may earn the highest academic degrees and speak words that influence world events, yet her deepest desire will be to meet an ideal man. She will want to meet an ideal man whom she can love and with whom she can give birth to sons and daughters filled with blessing. This is the root of happiness. The ideal of the Unification Church is nothing other than this. It begins in the family and ends in the family. ,

So what kind of teaching is the cosmos-centered principle? It is Cham- bu-mo ju-eui, or the teaching centered on True Parents. This is the ultimate principle, and it upholds parents. This is the philosophy of our home, the philosophy of our nation, and the philosophy each of us must have as individuals.

Had human beings not fallen, whose thought would have ruled the world? It would have been Adam’s thought. This is the same as the teaching centered on True Parents. It is the father-mother principle. No teaching can be higher than this.

The mission of the Unification Church is to link matters of the heart with heavenly thought through the philosophy of True Parents within the framework of the original ideal family. When all families have internalized such a philosophy, the Unification Church will have accomplished its purpose.

CHAPTER TWO

The Human Course Centered on Love

Section 1. Why are people born?

If we ask the question, “Which came first, life or love?” the answer can be argued either way. However, which do you really think came first? Love came first. The fundamental core of the universe must disseminate love prior to originating existence. Otherwise, there would be no value to the things of existence.

When we examine the origin of life, we must ask whether life or love came first. Until now we have not been able to discern this clearly. But now we know it could not have been fife that came first. It was love. What comes second must fall in line behind what comes first. It is natural that we offer our lives for the sake of love. This is how we ought to understand it. Therefore, let us understand how to live our lives in a way that is true.

We conclude that since love gave birth to life, we must walk the way of love and die for love. The purpose of human life is to establish a love that can be welcomed by the macrocosm, not just the microcosm. It is to be born, to love and to die in the midst of the great universal love that is acknowledged by God, creation, our parents and the angelic world.

Human beings do not choose to be born. Then, are we born by our parents’ desire? No. We are born by God’s desire. We are born through the love of our parents, which represents God’s love. Each of us was created as a new life by means of the love of our parents, representing God’s love.

Love has the power to create the whole. Each of us was born as a central being of the entire universe, with the capacity to receive all the love in the universe. The highest purpose of life is to be born through love, to be raised in love, to live by love, and to leave a legacy of love when we die. Nothing can be of greater value than to live out our natural life within our own family as a life of love that is the center of the universe.

It is important to understand why people are born. We are not born for the sake of knowledge or power. We are born because of love and from love. Then what makes love so great? It is because love is the fountainhead of life.

You were born in the midst of your parents’ love. You were not born from your parents’ desire for monetary profit or pursuit of knowledge. Because you were born in love this way, you ought to bear fruit in love. This is why you need to have children.

A husband and wife become complete when they become as one with each other and come to have sons and daughters as their partners. Human beings cannot exist apart from love. So we can say that each of us lives on the foundation of love. Everything in creation has the origin of its existence in God’s love.

Since all things exist with love as their foundation, it is undeniable that human beings, as the center of the created universe, also must have begun in love. Since human beings begin in love and mature through love, we are beings that cannot live apart from the standard of love.

Section 2.The love-centered original vision for human life

What is the cause of human existence? The cause originated in love. Then what do you think the purpose of human existence is? The purpose of our existence is to fulfill the ideal of love. Human beings came into being through love, so our purpose is to perfect love by forming a foundation of love and then expanding and connecting it so that it becomes complete.

Because our origin is love, our purpose must also be reached through love. For this, a man and a woman in a partner relationship must become as one in love and connect front and back, right and left, and higher and lower.

Even if a person becomes an absolute being, or establishes an absolute purpose, it will be of no use unless this person is joyful. Our daily lives ought to be joyful.

We live for the sake of a certain purpose. When we achieve this purpose, something new comes into being that is greater than the original existence itself. What is this? What is most precious for a man or a woman? It is love.

Only love can connect us to happiness and joy. No matter how lofty our purpose may be, if we do not establish the authority of love in the subject position over our purpose, we will have to pursue a different purpose. The limit of purpose is that it cannot stand above love.

What are you living for? There will be some who say that they live to eat. Others will say that they live to work, and still others will say that they live without a purpose.

What do human beings live for? If someone says that he lives for the sake of love, what a wonderful answer that would be. Human beings are born as the fruit of love, give love during the course of their lives, and eventually return to the eternal love of God’s bosom. This is the original vision of human life and the purpose of our creation.

We are born in love and raised in love. We then connect to a love of a higher dimension, meaning that we leave the love of our parents and seek out the love of a partner. We can say that the love we experience as children is formation-stage love and that conjugal love is growth-stage love. No matter how much a couple may be in love, they cannot see the completion of their love until they have children. This is why they want to have children. This is completion-stage love. So the process of going through children’s love, conjugal love and parental love is the fundamental basis for how we lead our lives, and the necessary path leading to the love ideal as God created it.

Love gives birth to life. We are born of love, raised in love by the love of our parents, meet a loving spouse whom we can love, and then die in that love. This is the course of human life. In the original vision for human life there was no concept of sorrow or pain.

Originally, the universe was meant to operate under a standard of love by which everything would converge simultaneously in a comprehensive union that would encompass both the vertical and horizontal. Children’s love, conjugal love and parental love would combine and create such a union. This would become the focal point of the entire universe, the directional orientation of all cells in the universe.

All the spirits in the spirit world would be focused on this point. Moreover, they would protect this position so that no one could invade it. If this place were to be destroyed, it would be catastrophic. For true love to be protected and preserved, it would need to take on some kind of structure. In the teachings of the Unification Church this structure is called the four- position foundation.

Section 3. Love, the nutrient for eternal life

When you were a fetus in your mother’s womb, you did not receive only nutrients from your mother. You also received love. In a similar manner, people living on earth do not receive merely physical nutrients from the natural universe. We also receive love, an essential element of life, from God.

Plants absorb sunlight as an element of life, and in a similar way love is an element of life for people. Our earnest desire is for the kingdom of heaven on earth and the kingdom of heaven in heaven to be places where we can eternally relate to one another with true love.

The life path for both men and women exists because of love and for the sake of love. We each have a path to travel, and it is a path of love. We go this way to obtain love, to protect love and to form an environment filled with love. When a woman puts on makeup to make herself beautiful, it is because of love. When we want something and work to get it, it is also because of love. We endure hardship and move forward in order to obtain precious love.

From the moment we are born, we receive parental love. For as long as our parents are alive, they will love us at each stage of our lives, through childhood, young adulthood and middle age. If we grow up receiving parental love, then eventually the horizontal love of husband and wife will take form within each of us.

What is marriage? It can be compared to a school that men and women enter so that the men can learn things they did not know about women, and the women can learn things they did not know about men. When all the grades are A+, then the husband will be absolutely happy and the wife will be absolutely happy. You bear sons and daughters as a way to learn how to love the world. Without them, you cannot be connected to the future. Your sons and daughters art given to you as educational materials so that you can be connected to the future world.

Acts of filial piety toward your ancestors, or your grandfather and grandmother, enable you to be educated by the spirit world. All these things are connected, with love at the center. The grandfather and grandmother, husband and wife, and sons and daughters are all connected, with love at the center.

Just as blood cells circulate throughout the human body, our ancestors in the spirit world, going back even to the ten thousandth generation, are able to circulate up and down and communicate with their distant descendants. It is important to know that this is how the spirit world and the entire universe are structured. True love will take dominion over everything. We can say that becoming a servant, even a slave, to true love is the greatest happiness.

Section 4. What is God’s love like?

You need to learn about God’s love. How can we characterize God’s love? It can be compared to an environment of a warm spring day. White clouds gently float in the sky, waves of warm air shimmer up from the ground, insects fly around, ants crawl in and out of their nest to see the world, willow blossoms are in bloom down by the stream, frogs sing new songs of spring, bees swarm and butterflies flutter. You feel intoxicated by these surroundings. You feel that you are about to doze off; however, in reality you are awake and feel so good that you want to remain in this state forever.

This is how God feels when He finds His ideal partner. It is as if He is in a beautiful flower garden, with butterflies and bees flying around. Does it make you feel good to think of this, or does it make you feel bad? These dull-witted men over here may not understand this. It feels good. When you run into someone whom you are pleased to see, you hold his hand firmly and shake hands. When someone joyfully says, “Wow, it’s been a long time!” and holds your hand firmly, does it make you feel good or bad?

When you are glad to see someone, do you hold hands tightly or not? Do you like it when someone grasps your hand firmly? [Audience: “Yes, we do.”] You mean, you want to like it. How can you say you like it? You have to know the person in order to like it. If you don’t know the person, how can you like it when he grabs your hand? If it is someone you like, then once you grasp each other’s hands, you cannot let go. What about these young ladies here? Think of how it will be when you are married and your husband loves you. Will you feel good or bad?

It’s important for people to be straightforward. If your husband loves you, you will feel as though there is nothing in the world you would rather have. You want to live your whole life just staying by his side. It is nice to watch as a man with hands like the front hooves of a cow gently takes the hand of a woman.

Those are the kind of movies that are nice to watch. If the woman were to say to the man, “Oh, you have such pretty hands,” the man would be offended. This is how it is.

Love is eternal. Love is not two; it is one. You become as one. When a man and a woman become a couple and love each other, they are bonded together. Of course, this does not happen literally; yet in heart they reach a level even higher than this. That is God’s love. If you live with such love, will you become one or not? Think about it. You are destined to become one.

When a man and a woman fall in love, all sorts of strange things happen, don’t they? But if you find a way to really taste God’s love, you will see that it cannot be compared to anything in this world. Once you have tasted this kind of love, no amount of difficulty or sorrow can defeat you. Such a realm of absolute liberation does exist. The question is how to find it.

God’s love can be divided into three major forms. These are children’s love, conjugal love and parental love. The center where these three forms converge into one is God’s love.

Section 5. God’s blessing to inherit love and joy

A glorious new morning will dawn when God assumes a physical body. Even more glorious will be the moment when He has a couple, husband and wife, whom He can love. Still more glorious will be the moment when God can love His grandchildren; that moment will be more thrilling than when He first loves His son and daughter.

How do you think God would have let Adam know how happy He felt at the moment He created him? God would have had to teach Adam, saying, “Here, this is how happy I was.” We learn about God’s happiness only when we have our own sons and daughters. When children are young, they can’t comprehend parental love, yet they come to understand it later when they marry and have their own babies. Then they say, “So this is how my parents loved me when they were raising me.” The day when your child takes a spouse is a day of glory, and the day when your child becomes a parent is also a glorious day.

We need to know God’s love. We need to have experienced children’s love and to be able to serve our parents. We need to have experienced conjugal love and to know how to serve our spouse. We need to have experienced parental love and to know how to care for our children. We ought not just order them around; we have to understand and serve them as well. Only then can we understand God’s love. Without children, we are incomplete. We cannot fully understand God’s love.

Until now we have had no idea how much God has loved human beings, His children. Without the experience of being a husband, a man cannot know what it is like to have a wife, and without the experience of being a wife, a woman cannot know what it is like to have a husband. Children do not know what parents’ love is like until they themselves become parents. So without sons and daughters, none of us can become true parents.

Parents want their children to be married, because they want to teach them and pass on to them all their parental love. When parents die, they leave behind their substantial selves with their descendants. This is why we need descendants.

Love continues forever. Since love is the highest human desire, everyone has his or her arms outstretched in a desire to inherit it. When parents pass on their love to their descendants, they can stand proudly before God when they enter the spirit world.

It is only through the family that such love can be perfected. Going to the heavenly kingdom through the family means that the realm of oneness of love has been realized.

People must follow rules and principles. When spring comes, seeds are sown; in summer plants develop fully, and in autumn they bear fruit. In winter we need to put things in order and carry the essence of the seed of life deep within our heart. Only then will we have new seeds to plant when spring returns.

This means that we are meant to become parents, to bear sons and daughters who resemble us. It means we need to raise our sons and daughters to be like us.

Why do people feel sad when they do not have sons and daughters? It is because they cannot form a circle. When you see birds feeding their young, you can recognize the deep love of the mother bird. Western people may not know that in the East people like children more than adults. People show polite respect to adults, yet they show the utmost love for children. You can realize how much your parents loved you when you have your own sons and daughters and raise them.

Everyone ought to get married, have children and raise them. This is the only way they can know both children’s love and parental love. It seems that Western people are not like this. There are many who avoid having and raising sons and daughters. They hesitate to have children, because children may limit their freedom to marry and divorce. However, when people do not establish the four-position foundation, they cannot go to the kingdom of heaven, because they do not know God’s heart of love for human beings.

Section 6. Living in search of the center of love

We are born in love, are raised in the love of our parents, and mature as we broaden our love horizontally. The first stage of horizontal love is completed when we meet a partner of the opposite sex and grow together to a point where we can represent the love of heaven and earth and then bear children as the fruits of that love. Children are born from the heart’s core as a result of love.

A child born from a man and woman who share love based on heart creates a path for the parents to the central point of love. If you go through this center and follow the path, you will meet God. By having children as fruits of love, you come to experience deeply the love by which God created all things, including you. When parents love their children with the same love they received as they grew up, they come to have a deep understanding of the parental heart. The love that parents pour out to their children is an essential love, not a love based on material things.

Even though everything else in heaven and earth may change with the eras of history, the love that parents give their children will never change. By becoming parents and loving our children, we come to understand much more deeply how God has loved human beings. We can confirm this through our experiences. By becoming parents and loving our children, we can feel how much our parents loved us and come to a deep realization about this.

This is why we honor and attend our parents more in their old age and willingly fulfill the duties of filial piety with love. If you are not able to do this, you are not qualified to be parents, and your love toward your children can be considered only hypocritical.

We need to realize and feel how much God has loved us by becoming parents ourselves and loving our children. This will let us love God with even greater sincerity. A person ought to love their aged parents more than they love their children, and love God more than they love their parents, knowing that this is the order and law of love.

When we are born, we are born in love. After birth, we receive love and grow through our childhood years. Once we grow to a certain level, our parents’ love alone is not enough for us, and we begin to expand our love horizontally to include love among siblings and love within the clan.

In other words, we mature as we receive all the love that exists in heaven and earth. In particular, as we enter the years of adolescence, we begin to crave the love of the opposite gender. It is by giving and receiving love with a person of the opposite gender that we are able to enter a realm of love that is much more comprehensive; then, for the first time, we are able to set out in search of the center of love. Because heaven and earth have a spherical shape, when we begin to rotate through giving and receiving horizontal love, we are able to form a circular shape.

When we find our partner of the opposite gender and begin to interact in love, our love bears fruit in our children. Then, as we give and receive love with our children, we fulfill vertical love in addition to horizontal love. This creates a spherical shape and enables us, at the same time, to establish the center of love.

The center of love that emerges through this movement of love is the core of existence for the entire world of creation. The earth exists because it continues to engage in motion around a center of love. At the center of love, an unlimited force sustains this movement. The center of this sphere of love is the place where God dwells.

All created beings in the world originate and exist by virtue of God’s love, and seek the center of God’s love. God is a furnace of love.

Section 7.The three eras of the human course

Everyone is born after a time spent in our mother’s womb. We live on earth for a certain time, and then we die. Prior to birth, the fetus spends about ten months in the mother s womb. While in the womb, the fetus has limited freedom. It develops by receiving nutrients from the mother through the umbilical cord. About all it can do is bend its fingers, open and close its mouth, and wriggle its feet.

Nevertheless, for the fetus, the mothers womb is a world of freedom representing the entirety of the realm of life. After about ten months, the fetus is born into the world and begins to grow. A child is born into this earthly world where we all live. This is human society.

Why are people born? We are born for the sake of love. This is the reason that a child, firmly rooted in parental love, will develop in the mother’s womb, the bosom of the parents’ protection and love. After the child is born, he or she won’t know any better and may wet the bed, but loving parents will not blame the child for this. Their love is such that they do not recognize ugliness as being ugly. Their love lets them digest everything in joy. When a child reaches maturity, at around twenty years of age, he or she would meet an eternal partner in love and be engrafted onto a love whereby each lives for the sake of the other, according to the principle of Heaven.

As we follow this life course, we need to experience the greatness of God’s love, so that the substantial realm of God’s love for all of His object partners can be fulfilled. Therefore we, as parents, need to have children and give our love to them.

After being born into the world, our lives can still be compared to the life of a fetus in our mother’s womb. In other words, we live in the womb of our mother universe for about a hundred years. Just as the fetus is ignorant of the world outside the womb, people living in the earthly world today are ignorant of the reality of the incorporeal world that comes after death.

We have only a vague sense that a world after death may exist, just as we did not know about the human world while in our mother’s womb. However, the spirit world exists in reality, regardless of our beliefs or feelings

about it. Because the world after death cannot be perceived by our five physical senses, we must overcome our disbelief through religious faith.

There are three stages of our life course as human beings: the water stage, the land stage and the air stage. Everything, even the animals, exists in the realm of these three stages. In order to stand as the lords of creation and be qualified to have dominion over all other creatures, we must go through these three stages—in water, on land and in the air—in a more complete form than any other being, to prove ourselves superior to all other creatures. So we must go through an air stage.

However, we have no wings. How can we fly without wings? We ought to be able to fly higher and farther than any bird or insect. Then what can we do? This cannot happen in our physical body. No matter how high we may try to jump, it is no use.

Because human beings are the lords of creation, and because God is a spiritual being, we must have the same stage of operation as God if we are to stand in a realm of dominion in a reciprocal relationship with Him.

Today people speak of the speed of electricity or light, and we know that the speed of light is three hundred thousand kilometers per second. Human beings, however, are capable of a speed that is even faster. We attain this in the realm of the human spirit.

We live in this world, but it is not everything. There is the spirit world, the place where our spirits are meant to live for eternity. It is an eternal world filled with the air of love. Our physical lives are a time of preparation for entering the eternal world of spirit.

Section 8. Training to be in rhythm with the spirit world I have a depth of spiritual experience. The spirit world is a place enveloped in the elements of love. On the earth we breathe air, while in the spirit world people five by inhaling love. The love you give and receive in the spirit world is not secular human love. It is true love.

When you go to the spirit world, this is what you will find. Those who have abundant love for their parents, brothers and sisters, spouse and children—that is, those who have experienced deep love in their family life— will enjoy great freedom.

They can go anywhere without restriction. On the other hand, those who have not experienced love are narrow-minded, and even in the spirit world

they find themselves isolated and with no freedom whatsoever.

The love between parent and child is a vertical relationship, the love between husband and wife is a horizontal relationship, and the love among siblings is a relationship that circles and surrounds. These three relationships differ from one another. Therefore, only when you experience deep love through these three mutually distinct interactions on earth can you circulate freely—vertically, horizontally and in a circle.

For example, a person who has not tasted parental love, because the parents died early, is in a rather tragic position, because he is missing an important experience of love. Likewise, those who have not experienced the conjugal love relationship of husband and wife, as well as love in the family, become poor people in the spirit world, because they lack a crucial experience of life. Those who have no brothers and sisters also will be in a poor position in the spirit world, because they lack this experience.

Why do you need to get married? We marry so that we can experience parental love, conjugal love and children’s love. Then why are these necessary? The spirit world is filled with the air of such love. You need to have a family in order to train yourself to be in rhythm with the spirit world. Those who go to the spirit world without these experiences of love cannot follow the rhythm there. It will be as if they were without a nose to breathe in this air of love.

You are born from your father and mother. On a more fundamental level, God gave birth to you by means of your father’s seed and your mother’s womb. You come to find the True Parent, God, after going through the universe as your parent and then through your natural parents. Your natural parents are transient ones, so the moment of your death needs to be a jubilant time when you go to meet the True Parent. In that place there is the true love of the True Parent. We call this place the kingdom of heaven in heaven.

The kingdom of heaven is composed of love, and it is filled with the love of the Heavenly Parent. This is not love for oneself; rather, it is love that can connect to every direction, enabling us to go anywhere without any problem, through the principle of service and sacrifice. In order to pass the test for this, you need to love the universe and love humanity. Life on earth is the training ground for you to cultivate such love.

Do you know how important your life on earth is? You live it only once.

It is a short moment that comes only once. When compared to eternal life, the earthly life is only a point. It is too short a moment. However, it is at this moment that we must go beyond our physical lives and prepare ourselves for the spirit world.

CHAPTER THREE

The Original Vision for Love Between Men and Women

Section 1. Bringing joy to God and all creation

Though a man and a woman may be in love, the question is whether or not their love is in accord with God’s Will and the standard He requires of human beings. Is their love in accord with the model of love in the mind of God? If the first man and woman had become as one in true love with God at the center, this love would have become the model for true love throughout the universe. God must have desired such love from human beings. Likewise, the man and woman must have wanted this kind of love from each other. Such true love would have become the core of the universe. It would be the standard against which all other loves would be compared.

God’s love and human love are essentially the same. Love is a force that strives to bring two together as one. Why do a man and a woman long for each other? It is because God’s essence can be experienced by a man only through a woman, and by a woman only through a man. This is because God dwells in the place where a man and a woman become as one in love.

Knowing that God is the source of dual characteristics, we need to give even greater praise to the noble value of God whenever we praise the dignity and value of men and women.

When a woman loved by God is in a man’s heart, and that man loved by God is in the heart of that woman, and the two form a couple and praise God together, God will rejoice to see this and all of creation will rejoice as well. The loving embrace between these two people will make heaven and earth rejoice. When such a husband and wife embrace each other in mutual love, the power of their love pulls the entire universe into oneness. This is the original vision of God’s creation when manifested according to His ideal.

Originally, a man was to meet a woman with whom he could rejoice, and a woman was to meet a man with whom she could rejoice. When these two met and pledged to love one another, their encounter would bring joy to God and to all things of creation.

When this happened, all of creation would be mobilized for this couple and would welcome their dominion. Birds would sing for them and butterflies would flutter and dance with joy. God would rejoice, people would rejoice, all of creation would rejoice. Had our first ancestors started history by securing such a position, the world would be the ideal world of God’s original vision.

Section 2. Why men and women are born

What is the original purpose of a man’s birth? We cannot deny that he is born for the sake of a woman. Likewise, a woman is not born for her own sake. We need to know that a problem will arise if a woman cannot come to a clear realization within herself that she is born for the sake of a man.

God, the great administrator of heaven and earth, established this principle as a principle of creation, and we cannot enter the world of goodness, truth, happiness and peace, the ideal world of true love, unless we follow this principle.

A woman is born to meet a man, and a man is born to meet a woman. Isn’t that right? This is the highest truth. Therefore, we seek the realm of blessing by following this principle. Deviating from this highest realm of truth constitutes the highest evil.

Men and women are physically opposite. Whereas women are one-directional, men are three-directional or four-directional. Women are more likely to enjoy staying at home, and men are more likely to enjoy traveling the world.

The characters of men and women are opposite. Then what can be at the center to bring the subject-partner man and object-partner woman into oneness? They become one when love is at the center. Love also brings people and God into oneness.

Why is a man born? He is not born for the sake of academic pursuits, money or political power. He is born for the sake of a woman. A man is born for the sake of a woman. A man has a larger physique, not so he can earn a living only for himself, but so he can earn a living for his wife and children.

Men’s reproductive organs and women’s reproductive organs are different. For whom do they exist? They did not come into existence for their own sake. A man’s reproductive organ came into existence for the sake of a woman.

Likewise, a woman’s reproductive organ is for the sake of a man. Have you ever thought this way? This is not something to laugh about and then forget.

What is the symbol of the love between man and woman? Where is the ultimate destination of love? It is the reproductive organ, which makes a man and a woman as one body. The reproductive organs become a channel through which the mind.and body can merge completely, with love at the center. That which man has is not his, and that which woman has is not hers. A husband has what belongs to his wife, and a wife has what belongs to her husband. Men and women are not born for their own sake. They have to know clearly that they are born for the sake of their partner.

Why are men and women born on earth? They are born in order to love each other. Since God is the great king of wisdom, He switched the ownership of their love organs. A man has a reproductive organ, but that does not mean he is its owner. The same is true for a woman. Those who have acted carelessly, with no regard for their reproductive organ’s ownership, will be judged for having violated love. If a man knew that he would be punished under the most fearful law, would he dare to think of another woman instead of his wife? Conversely, would a woman dare to think of a man other than her husband?

Section 3. Men and women absolutely need each other

Love is something that you absolutely need, isn’t it? Human beings, a man and a woman, are an absolutely necessary element for love. Man needs woman and woman needs man.

How much do they need each other? They need each other more than they need Korea, more than they need the world, and even more than they need God. If there were no women, the human race would perish in less than a hundred years. No matter how much men boast of uniting the world, all would be gone within one hundred years if there were no women. So women are absolutely necessary.

When we say “human beings,” we refer to man and woman. When we consider a particular man, we see that he has to be with a woman, and when we consider a woman, she has to be with a man. Man is not born through his own desire, nor is woman, who is absolutely needed by the man, born through her own desire. After we are born, we discover that we are either a man or a woman.

When you were born as a man, were you aware that there are women in the world? If a man were born and found out that there were only men, would he not feel bad? And if a woman were born and found out that there were only women, she would feel bad, wouldn’t she? So when a woman is born, is she bom with or without the knowledge that there are men? Although I was bom without this knowledge, the one who gave birth to me knew it. The reason a person is born as a woman is that there is a man who needs her.

Likewise, the reason I am born as a man like this is that there is a woman who needs me. We all are born like this, with God’s knowledge.

Man absolutely needs woman. Man absolutely needs God. However, before he needs God he needs a partner called woman. Human history has been miserable because men have been unable to understand correctly their absolute need for women. Conversely, women have not understood that they absolutely need men.

Tasting true love requires a realm of the ideal, and for this a man needs a woman and a woman needs a man. You must know that an absolute man and an absolute woman pursuing true love are joined through their efforts of becoming one in heart. When such a man and woman are joined as one, God dwells in their midst.

God does not like to see a couple separating who have been joined by true love, so the love of an absolute man and woman is eternal.

God is omniscient and omnipotent, yet even the Absolute Being has no meaning when He is alone. Similarly, no matter how handsome and healthy a man may be, these things have no meaning if he is without a woman. A man living in fascination with his own good looks and health leads an ugly existence and has no value. The problem is that there are many men in the world who have sunk into such narcissism, and this is one reason why history has moved toward tragedy. It is important to understand that God’s providence has been working to change and improve this world, which is immersed in such self-centeredness.

Section 4. Love comes from your partner

By himself or herself, a person cannot realize love. From where does love come? Love does not originate from me; it comes from my spouse. Since love comes from my spouse, I must bow my head and serve her. This is where the heavenly principle of living for the sake of others originates. We must practice the philosophy that teaches that when something highly noble comes to me, I must honor and serve it in order to receive it.

Human beings have love. However, when we are alone, love cannot manifest itself. Love does not appear when a man is alone; it appears only when a woman is there as his object partner in love. Only when an object partner in love appears does love finally spring forth.

We say that parental love is good and conjugal love is good, because genuine love is not something self-centered. Love does not start from me; it starts from my partner. It is important to know this. Love comes from your husband or wife, from your sons and daughters, and from your brothers and sisters. Love does not start from you. It starts from your spouse. Therefore, who is the owner of love? Your spouse is the owner of love.

From where did we say love comes? It comes from your partner. If your partner is homely or ugly, love recedes; if your partner is pretty and lovely, love advances more quickly. The way love functions is determined according to your partner’s attributes: her speech, her beauty, her scent and her taste.

Where is the basis of love? I am not the basis of love. The word “love” must be used in reciprocal terms. No matter how handsome a man may be, he cannot love if he has no partner to love.

The basis of love is not one’s own self. “Love comes from me” are the words that Satan has been exploiting. I am not the basis of love. You may think that you are the basis of love, yet there will be no future unless you totally change such a mindset and correct it.

Until now, wives have put themselves at the center and husbands have put themselves at the center, both wanting to be served. That is why their relationships often come to ruin.

Again, conjugal love does not originate from you, but from your spouse. Therefore, if you want to possess your spouse’s love, you need to sacrifice yourself for the sake of love.

Love always demands sacrifice. Also, love requires that we overcome. In fact, this is the only place in all heaven and earth where we can find the power to overcome Satan’s world. God is holding tightly onto love; true love can be found only in accordance with the principle that places God at the center. Religious virtues including compassion and benevolence are also rooted in love. These words do not pertain to individuals alone; they are used only in the context of a mutual relationship.

Section 5. Men and women harmonize in love

Man symbolizes heaven and woman symbolizes earth. Therefore, the two must unite in harmony. Men and women are different. Men’s muscles are rugged and women’s are smooth. Men have beards while women do not. Their voices are also different. These apparently contrasting features of men and women actually allow them to fit together well. Harmony is created between them. When we look at the physical structure of human beings, their left and right sides are complementary and form a correlative pair. These two halves are bound tightly together.

Ladies and gentlemen, do you like things that are only high or only low? You like things that create harmony. Judging from the fine formed by the horizon, fish live below this fine, and mammals, birds and other creatures live above it. Women menstruate once a month, like tidal variations based on the moon. Breathing involves inhaling and exhaling. A man and a woman need to establish a line of balance and create harmony.

The reason people like to go to Disneyland, with its rides that go up and down, is that this is similar to the nature of the universe. Which do you think will be more pleasing, men socializing only with other men, or men and women socializing together? Men and women together are better, because this reflects the harmony of the universe. We need to live in step with the beat of the universe, which promotes harmony through the balance of yin and yang.

When a husband and wife create a harmony of love, they initiate circular movement. When they become one body in love and bear the fruits of love, God comes down, and they go up and they meet in the middle.

God becomes the center of this sphere, and spherical movement begins. From this central point, connections can be established in any direction. The center of the sphere is the place where the harmony of love is realized. It is the place where life emerges and moves, and it is the starting point of human equality and shared philosophy. This is so because the power of love is there. Thus the force that embraces all interactions of the universe is love.

For human beings love is eternal. It is always one, never two. Once a man and a woman are joined in love, they are to live together for a lifetime and then for eternity, even after death. They are two bodies, but by revolving in oneness with each other, they become as one body.

When husband and wife become one, they revolve with God to form a four-position foundation of love. This is the ideal world of love. Only true love dwells there; false love cannot invade. When a man and a woman are blessed in marriage by God and achieve perfect oneness, God is able to come to them at any time.

When they form a four-position foundation of love, they will come to love each other’s heart through each other’s body, and when they come to love the heart their body will follow.

Section 6. Enraptured by true love

What is the most sacred thing in the world? It is true love. True love begins with God. If God exists, there can be no other path. God truly desires the path of true love, so without traversing the path of true love we cannot go before God. It is important to understand this point.

God wants to see, hear, eat and touch through love. As for human beings, if we were to receive God’s kiss of love, our joy would be so great that we would feel as though we might explode from the inside. This is where God’s desire lies. Having diamonds or jewelry would not give Him joy.

The human body has five senses, and every human being feels and confirms true love through the sensations of the five senses. If the eyes are directed toward true love, they will be colored by true love and intoxicated in it.

How beautifully those colorful, intoxicated eyes will shine! Think about how enchanting would be the smiling lips of a person immersed in true love. Try to imagine the intense beauty of the five senses, intoxicated with true love, moving in harmony toward God.

Alone, God cannot experience the joy of such beauty. He can only experience such beauty when He has a partner; this is the reason He created human beings.

How would God feel as He observed a beautiful man and woman absorbed in one another through eyes intoxicated with true love, or kissing with lips intoxicated with true love, and playing the melody of a heart of true love? If there were an Eve of true love, God would want to traverse her world of heart completely.

God would feel an impulse to find out for Himself just how far and how deep the world of heart of this beautiful Eve extended. God would want to traverse both Adam’s and Eve’s world of heart, a world more beautiful than the heaven and earth that He Himself created. It is certain that God would want to travel the world of the heart of a person of true love even more than he would want to travel the universe. God would feel that He would never want to leave Adam and Eve’s world of heart and true love.

If God, after creating human beings, fell into their true love and became lost in that love, what kind of world would we have? God would dwell in the midst of human beings, and the world formed by God and human beings in oneness certainly would be a world filled with joy and beauty.

If true love had been perfected, in responding God would be totally absorbed by true love and have no regrets. God’s nature is such that He would be completely happy with anything that happened within the realm of true love. If human beings were to live in this world of true love, they would live their entire lives happy and free from regret. Moreover, this would be a world without a history of warfare and free of complaint and misfortune.

Section 7. Love happens in completely natural settings

This is a story from my childhood. One day Icaught a pair of birds and tried to make them kiss each other’s beaks. To see them kiss, Iput them in a cage, fed them and watched them. Idid it out of a child’s desire to see them love each other and sing happily together. This was an experiment, out of curiosity, to understand the principles of nature. Icontinued this experiment, which Inow understand to have been quite naughty.

It was only much later that I began to realize that love happens in natural settings. Sincere love is realized naturally, in a most natural setting. It was only as a result of a long series of experiments that I came to a correct understanding about love.

When someone has lost the value of love, what good would it do for this person to receive a university education? Such a person will only accumulate knowledge, become individualistic, and come to worship materialism. Just as Korean bean paste soup tastes right only when it is served in an earthenware bowl, so character training can reach its purpose only when it is based on love.

The flower of world civilization blossoms on the basis of artistic harmony. In this sense, roasted ribs need to be served on a platter and Korean bean paste soup ought to be served in an earthenware bowl to bring out the proper taste of each dish. Once you grow accustomed to the rough, deep and refreshing taste of Korean bean paste soup, you never will forget it, no matter where you may go.

Likewise, once people have become used to the earthy, deep, relaxing taste of love, they will not change. Just as we easily tire of instant foods that usually are heavily sweetened, if we could obtain love easily and anywhere, like we can instant food, we could not call it true love.

There are people everywhere today whose love is like instant food. This is a problem. Love does not deepen because you bathe in a fragrant bath. I would say that the love of a husband and wife living in the remotest countryside, who wash themselves in cold water before going to bed, is purer, longer lasting and ever deepening.

A couple who have to clean their teeth before kissing are not experiencing natural love. The toothpaste smell will prevent them from tasting the unique smell of the other. When I look at people who clean their teeth before kissing, I don’t know whether they are trying to taste love or taste toothpaste.

When you meet someone you like and love, you want to embrace and kiss that person. This is natural between the sexes. We have a relationship with our environment so that we can feel affection toward the universe. It is natural for us to do this, as a part of our search for a partner.

When all people relate to each other within this ideal of partnership— with each man relating to one woman and each woman relating to one man—there will be no acts or incidents that violate the order of love. The order of true love emerges only when man and woman meet on the basis of the ideal of partnership.

CHAPTER FOUR

Our Course of Life

Section 1. The purpose of God

God does not have a body. So God wanted to reveal Himself through all of creation as His body, with Adam as His face. This is the ideal of creation.

Originally, God was to be the spiritual focal point and Adam was to be the physical focal point. These two focal points were to form a ninety-degree angle. This is God’s purpose of creation, and it is the purpose that people desire. Had Adam and Eve not fallen, they would have occupied the positions of father and mother eternally in the spirit world. But because they fell, they

could not do this. Had there been no Fall, everyone could have gone to Heaven simply by attending their parents as though they were attending God.

This created world is round: the sun, the earth and the stars are all round. Even our mouths are round. Everything is created that way. Thus the universe creates relationships by going around and around in circular movements. Even if one individual thing has a round shape, it does not exist by itself; it exists in a relationship and is connected to the whole.

Then why are we born? We are born to beat in rhythm with this vast universe. Ocean waves lapping against the shore lap against our hearts as well. Gentle breezes sighing serenely lull our hearts into serenity. Flowers in bloom release rich fragrances and stir the fragrances in our hearts.

If we are born, raised, live and die in love, then we can be grateful for our birth, life and death. You all were born because you participated in the place where your father and mother expressed the utmost love for each other. You were participants in that love.

Since you were born through your parents’ love, you consider yourselves bom as flags planted by your parents’ love. These flags flutter to express love. We are meant to live for the sake of love throughout our lives. So you must wave the flag of love for your mother, wave the flag of love when you see your father, and wave the flag of love for your siblings.

Section 2. The importance of the moment

Your living body cannot be perfected unless your entire existence becomes a foothold for absorbing nutrients. This phenomenon occurs in the natural world. The crossroads of life do not appear over a long period of time; they arise at a single moment.

People who ignore the moment cannot obtain anything of value. They cannot become great people or inherit God’s throne and crown. So, to make each moment shine, you need to exercise care with each word you utter, each action you take and even each thought you have. Deal with life and resolve problems, believing that the contents of your daily life will remain as phenomena through which you maintain a relationship to the world. That is the only way the realm of victory is determined.

It is in the moment that the victory is determined. It is the same with the historical realm of victory and the cosmic realm of victory. Those who live with unlimited value capable of making each moment shine brightly can become great people, even saints, and even God’s sons and daughters. In this way the junction of life and death is crossed in a single moment.

Today our attitude is the problem. Of course it is necessary to desire first the coming of the kingdom and wish for the Will to be done. Yet, what is more important is how we ourselves personally can become one with God’s Will.

If we refer to a particular, hour, it is more important to ask how we can spend that hour to come into a greater oneness with the Will than it is to simply desire that the kingdom of God be accomplished. So we first must create the environment—as individuals, families, tribes and peoples—that will enable us to inherit God’s Will. Only then can we establish a relationship with God’s kingdom. Then, with God at the center, how can you make a relationship with the Will in this one hour, if you are given an hour, within the sphere of your daily life? This is a very important question.

Looking at the history of the providence of restoration, there were four thousand years from Adam’s family through Noah’s, Abraham's and Moses’ families up to Jesus’ family. The mistakes that occurred during this course did not happen in the span of, say, a year. In Adam’s family the Fall of Adam and Eve was not something planned out and put into action in the span of a year or a decade or even several decades. Their mistakes happened in a flash. When we think of how the breakdown of that one moment has been perpetuated for eons of time, we can understand the fearfulness and dread- fulness of that instant.

Due to the misstep of that one moment, so many people who walked the path of righteousness in the course of history had to undergo untold suffering and many nations that could not follow the Will fell into the abyss of destruction. All these became a source of a tremendous indemnity offering. When we understand this, we can see how fearful even a single hour that we let just tick by can be. Even the eternal kingdom of heaven does not exist apart from the single moment.

Eternity does not start when we die. It continues on from the moment we come to know God’s Will. Here, if there is a leap in the relationship of time or a gap created for even an instant, eternity will be interrupted.

So while walking the path of faith in the course of your lives, do not procrastinate by deferring your providential responsibilities from this year to the next, and then to the year after that; or from your twenties to your thirties, your thirties to your forties; or from your forties and to your fifties.

You must not live this way. People with such a lifestyle will die without having lived even one day in oneness with the Will. They cannot go to the kingdom of heaven.

However wonderful a country you may live in, you cannot go to the kingdom of heaven if you are unable to live even one day according to a victorious standard; you cannot enter heaven if you do not live even one year victoriously. So, while it is important for believers to dream of eternity in their lives, it is even more important for them to eradicate evil and become the standard-bearers of goodness in the real world. This is what is most important.

From this perspective, Adam’s mistake of one moment resulted in eons of anguish. In Adam’s family, Cain and Abel were supposed to have dissolved the anguish of their parents, demolished the wall between the brothers and created the starting point for a family of oneness. However, the death of Abel, who had been set up to fulfill the providence of restoration, also occurred in a moment’s time.

Consider the course of Noah, who toiled one hundred and twenty biblical years to build the ark. It was in just one brief moment that God issued the command, “Go into the ark, for the day has come to fulfill My desire.” Those who followed this order received the blessing of the eternal God; those who did not were submerged in a realm of eternal judgment.

It was the same with Abraham. God’s promise that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sands on the seashore was bestowed in just a single moment. Abraham’s sacrificial offering did not require decades, rather a mere day’s work. The time it took him to cut the offering and place it on the altar was not more than an hour; yet that single hour historically bore the seeds of all life and death, curse and blessing.

People of faith today need not fear the coming of a day of judgment in the Last Days. Instead, worry about how to connect the time that is given you in your daily life to the Will of God, and how to form an intersection between your life and the Will.

Section 3. Infancy and three orderly stages

If God created Adam and Eve, how did He do it? If He created them from the soil, what kind of soil was it? Where did He begin? Which part of the body did He create first? We cannot think that God created them as adults.

He created them as babies. Without the notion that God went through the same process as a mother, who conceives a child in her womb, gives birth to it and then nourishes it, we cannot logically explain the formation of all existence through the three orderly stages of growth. So Adam and Eve must have had a period when they were infants. Later they went through a growth stage. This is the heavenly principle. Then there must have been a completion stage.

What was Adam and Eve’s infancy like? We must proceed from the concept that the invisible God nurtured and raised a baby who was able to go through a process extending from the world without form to the world with form.

Section 4. Our life course

Since the society, nation and world in which we live are far from ideal, all manner of suffering occurs and good and evil are at cross-purposes. If we were to look at a hundred people, we would find them all struggling against their surroundings and pushing against their environment in an effort to carry on their daily lives.

Our experience in our daily lives tells us that no one can be confident that daily tasks planned in the morning will be accomplished during that day. The wider the environment in which we work, the greater the drive and determination needed to bring a victorious conclusion in each day of our life. If these are lacking, the day cannot be a day of victory. Such days turn into months and months into years.

We lack the environment to live even one month according to our plan. To bring about victory for a month, we need the drive and determination necessary to break through all the complicated situations and circumstances we meet during that month. Otherwise, we cannot carry out our plan for the month victoriously.

Getting through a year successfully requires us to be equipped with a fighting spirit or driving force that can thrust aside all the challenges of each and every one of its three hundred sixty-five days. Otherwise, we cannot celebrate that year victoriously. If we live a year like that and continue in this vein, eventually it will add up to ten, and then twenty, and then thirty years, and that eventually becomes our life course.

People living on earth today cannot escape from the constraints of time.

That has been true throughout history. Individuals, families, tribes, people, nations and the world all move within the realm of time.

Wherever there are people, there are always purposes to accomplish. We need to live our lives with those purposes at the center for ten, twenty, thirty, seventy years and, indeed, our entire lives. The greater our goal, the stronger our internal commitment needs to be. Otherwise, we will not accomplish those purposes. Unless we maintain an internal determination that surpasses the goal through the process called time, the goal will be unattainable.

Section 5. The original homeland

You may not know the reality of the spirit world; however, I enjoy the special benefit from God of having a clear insight into that unknown world. When I went down to the fundamental level of that world, I found it is based on simple principles. It is a world that can be entered only by those who live for the sake of others, which is God’s principle for heaven and earth. The world structured along these lines is the ideal heavenly kingdom.

That place is the original homeland that humankind must seek. Today, although we are exiles from our original homeland and live in a fallen environment, we are destined to return there. Throughout the course of history, God has worked to create a path enabling us to return, because we could not do so by our own efforts.

This is why God raised up many different religions. They are training grounds through which He has been directing all people along that path, whatever their race, cultural background, customs and traditions. Religions are the training grounds for preparing people to become eligible to return to the original homeland. Taking into account the diverse cultural backgrounds of people all across the globe, God is leading humanity toward a united world of religion that can progress upward onto higher ground.

If religions were to guide people to such a homeland, what would they teach? They must teach people to live for the sake of others. The more highly developed a religion is, the more it emphasizes this principle. These religions teach their adherents to be gentle and meek, to stand in a position to elevate others, live for their sake, and serve them sacrificially. All this serves to instill in us the discipline we need to abide by the laws of the kingdom of heaven.

What is our life path? It is the path of possessing God’s love. Possessing God’s love is life’s highest and final destination. Men must go this path, and women must go as well. Everyone must go this way.

Our life path is to seek the God of infinite love. The loftiest path for our lives is the path that seeks God’s love by crossing over the peaks of death tens and even hundreds of times and continues in that search even after death.

What is the endpoint of our desires? It is to possess God’s love. Even if we say we know God, unless this brings us a more precious love than we have known before, we cannot say that God is our God. We need to come to experience God’s love. If we only had God’s love, it would be all right even if He were not present. Once we have God’s love, what is His becomes ours and ours becomes His, and the internal and the external become as one for the first time. A nation based on such love would be an ideal homeland, with no such thing as higher and lower classes.

When we are surrounded by that place of love, we feel there is nothing under the sun that does not appear good and that does not exist for our sake. Because God’s love is like that, the heavenly world, which is humankind’s destination—the kingdom of heaven—is a place filled with love.

Section 6. The wrong standard of birth

People in todays world may boast that they are high and important or tell you about their academic degrees, but what they do not realize is that they were misbegotten at birth. They do not know that they were born with the love, life and lineage of Satan, God’s enemy. This is a serious problem.

Due to the Fall, people have been born from Satan’s love, which was passed down to them through their parents. Satan’s blood was flowing in the life of our mothers and in the life of our fathers, and that blood now flows in each person. Each person is a fruit of this lineage.

For this reason, each of you belongs to the lineage of Satan. In other words, you could say that Satan’s blood is running through your veins. So while Satan is bearing his corrupt fruit automatically, God is striving to redeem those very men and women by transforming them into the pure and perfected people of His original vision. Your beginning was in Satan’s love. You were born from his lineage.

The beginning was wrong. Since the beginning was wrong, you must return to the original point. So we are going to go back. To where exactly do we go back? We need to go back to the origin. Since we originated from false parents, we need to return and start anew from true parents. How serious is this? It is imperative to inherit God’s love, life and lineage afresh.

This is why, when you receive the Blessing, you undergo a ceremony to change your lineage. You must believe in this more than your own life. Just because it is a Unification Church ceremony, you must not think of it as some ordinary ritual. Think of it as a wonder drug, an antidote, to restore the dead back to life.

Our ancestors made a mistake. Because of this, countless people throughout the course of human history have suffered. Knowing this, we cannot go that same path again. Never again! We paid a ghastly price throughout history for having perpetuated illicit love in the fallen spirit and earthly worlds, with far-reaching consequences for individuals, families, societies, nations and the world.

Section 7. The standard of our life course

When I say “life,” I mean eternal life. I am referring to the spirit world, and to the life we live for eternity. Each individual was created to be an object partner of God’s love. You are an object partner of the absolute God, who is the subject partner. You are His partner in love. God cherishes the notion of true love more than He values Himself. God is the absolute and eternal center of life. His ideal is eternal, and the center of that ideal is true love. The object partner of that love is you.

An attribute of love is that it brings subject and object partners into oneness. Such love can unite a nation. In this partnership one partner can accompany the other in any situation and follow unconditionally. God’s partner can inherit His entire fortune and even His entire heart. I went through a miserable course to discover this, and I now stand on that sublime and lofty foundation, which cannot be exchanged for anything. This is an amazing grace.

For that reason, I can stand in the same place as God and share the eternal position of true love. The spirit world is in a different dimension from this limited earthly world. We cannot move freely within our mundane confines here on earth, but the spirit world is on a higher dimension. There we can do anything; we can leap across time. If we desire anything with a heart of love, we can have it anywhere, at any time.

We were created originally as eternal beings. If we become eternal beings of true love, when we go to the spirit world we will be free. The first standard of life is to overcome evil with goodness; the second is to reach the original starting point; and the third is to attain eternal life.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Corporeal World and the Incorporeal World

Section 1. Prayer related to our life course

Beloved Heavenly Father, I thank You for the grace by which You have protected me since childhood, as I fought to prevent the possibility that Heaven might suffer the shame of humiliation.

Among all the good things on this earth, nothing can be more precious than to connect to Your original heart. We must yearn infinitely for that relationship. We must realize that those who experience Your love will find themselves in a place where they could forfeit everything else in this world without feeling any regret. We must prepare today on earth for the day of our birth as liberated children who are endowed with the right to be free in our third life.

Loving Father, in order to greet the new spring, we know that we must be completely absorbed in our destined relationship with You, and we must attain perfect harmony with You in our lives. Only thus can we greet the spring season and bloom as beautiful blossoms. We must not become pitiful souls who, when asked whether we ever greeted a spring season in our lives, are unable to reply in the affirmative.

Father, help us to understand that those who lack the heart to attend You and bow down humbly to You will be unable to have a connection to You in that eternal world. Let us open the doors of our hearts to feel Your heart; let us today hear Your voice welling up from the depths of our hearts so that we may regain our lost selves. Help us to appreciate Your historical course of toil and trouble to find each one of us, that we may humbly bow our heads before You.

Section 2. Understanding death

On the earth we have parents, teachers and relatives. We have ways to establish such relationships on the earth, but not in the spirit world. In the spirit world everyone lives for the whole, with God at the center. All positions are differentiated. Thus, those in a higher position cannot descend to a lower position, and it is difficult for those in lower positions to go to higher positions. Originally we were to have gone to the spirit world only after becoming perfected while on earth. Once we enter that world, there is no returning to the physical world. Everyone is destined to die.

Our life course is too short. Life is too short. Even a life span of eighty years is too short. It is not even eight hours in spirit world time. In terms of the concept of time in the eternal world, it’s not even eight hours. That is why the power of true love is great. True love transcends time and space and moves at a speed that is beyond our comprehension.

There is no doubt that the spirit world exists. It surely exists, and since we were born from the spirit world, we must return there. There is an interesting phrase in Korean, toraganda (meaning “to go back” and also meaning “to die”). To where do we go back? Going to a cemetery cannot be considered going back. We go back to our place of origin. We didn’t start out in a cemetery. The phrase implies that we go back beyond the most distant origins of history. It means to return across the vast expanses of history, even beyond its origin.

For a person to “go back” does not mean that if he is born as a Korean, he then goes back as a Korean. Although you may be a Korean when you die, the place you go back to is the original world of our human ancestors. What does this mean? It means that, if there is a Creator, we will go back to the place where this Creator resides. That is where we came from, so that is where we return.

The universe is engaged in circular motion. When the snow on the mountains melts, it flows down through narrow valleys and through many streams and rivers into the ocean. Once it is in the ocean, it evaporates and returns to the air to complete its cycle. Everything circulates. In a similar way, when we go back, where do we return? We go back to a place where we can be higher, a place where we can be happier. No one wants to become smaller. All the laws of motion of the natural world, however, dictate that things diminish through work. Wherever there is work, things diminish. When we roll something, it will not keep rolling forever. It starts out fast and then slows down and finally stops.

We live in this world, yet it is not the only world that exists. There is also the spirit world. This earthly world and the spirit world are not two completely separate worlds. They are connected together as one world. Then where is the place where we are to go, the place where we are to live? Of course, we are on earth now, living in our physical bodies; however, we are moving toward the eternal world. We are born into this world; we pass through our teen^, twenties, thirties, middle age, and then old age. When we pass the time of our youth and enter middle age, we pass over one hill, and then eventually we go into old age. Finally we end our lives just like the setting sun.

People who know the existence of the spirit world, however, realize that a lifetime is only a fleeting moment, and that an eternal world awaits us after death. For this reason, they live their lives on earth in such a way as to prepare themselves for that world of eternity.

The word “death” invites understanding of the meaning of life. Who knows the value of life well? Those who seek to live do not. The true value of life can be known only by someone who has risked his life to stand at the crossroads of life and death and, while clinging to Heaven, has desperately implored to be shown the value of life.

That being the case, would people welcome death or not? They would welcome it. If you are about to die, and someone asks you what you are dying for, you would be able to answer: “I am dying for the sake of God’s true love.” We discard our physical bodies to participate in the realm of activity of God’s infinite love and for the sake of God’s world of love.

To die physically is to be born in God’s love. That is why we hear people in this physical world sometimes saying in exaggeration, “Oh, I think I’m going to die.” Death is meant to be a moment of joy; it is the moment when we go from a realm of limited love to a realm of infinite love. Therefore, the moment of death is the moment of our second birth.

Would God be more joyful on the day of your birth into your physical body, or on the day you are born as a child who is to act for the sake of love in the second, infinite world? You might wonder why I talk about such things. It is because we cannot establish a relationship with God without liberating ourselves from the fear of death.

Section 3. The three stages of our lives

People go through the stages of formation, growth and completion during the course of their lives. We go through the realm of water in our mother’s womb, then the realm of the earthly world on planet Earth, and finally the aerial realm in heaven. In other words, people go through three periods: the period of water in the womb, the period of being born and living a hundred years on this earth, and then the period of flying in the aerial world.

People are born in the depths of water. The period in the womb is the period of existing in water. When the fetus is inside the mother’s womb, it is floating in fluid. It has to breathe in and exhale the fluid, and it lives by way of a hose connected to its mother’s womb. How is a fetus supplied with nutrients? It is supplied through the navel. The navel functions as its mouth. So we must not of be disdainful our navel. Pat your navel and say, “Belly button, thanks for your hard work a long time ago.” Pat your navel often; it will be good for your health. Do it as an exercise. If you exercise this way often, it will make you healthier. Even when you sleep in a cold room, if you cover your navel, you won’t get diarrhea.

In the womb, your navel is your mouth. At the time of birth, your breathing organ moves upward from the navel. What’s the next mouth? It is the mouth that you use for eating. It has moved upward. Eventually, what do we do with the umbilical cord attached to the navel? We cut it off.

In a similar way, during our life on earth, the spirit is attached to the physical body, like the embryo in the womb, and feeds off the physical body. When the physical body grows old, the spirit discards the physical body and goes out on its own. In accordance with fundamental principles and laws, the spirit must be reborn as a person who can relate to the eternal God, its spiritual Parent.

After being born into the earthly world, a baby becomes friends with its father and mother. We are born into the earthly world, where we can share love with our fathers and mothers. In a similar way, we eventually must be born again into the spirit world, where we can share love with God, our Parent, who connects us to the world of spirit that has no bounds.

What do we need after coming out of the womb? It is not just air, food and water; it is love. We need to receive elements of love. We cannot be fed only food. If food is the only thing you take in, you will start to die. You need to prepare for the next stage of your life. So what do you need to fill yourself with during your life on earth? You must form a new character by filling yourself with love during this period.

What you need on earth is love. Why do you call a child who lives without the love of a father and mother an “orphan?” It is because the child does not receive the parental love during their lifetime that can connect him or her eternally to the spirit world. This is also the reason we feel pity for people who live alone without marrying.

After our physical death, which is the destruction of the body that has been breathing air on earth—the second kind of breathing—we begin breathing elements of love. Love is invisible. While we are on earth, our internal self, our spirit, grows through the love we receive from our parents and our spouse. That is why, just as an embryo develops in the womb in accordance with God’s law so that it grows to become a healthy baby, our spirit must develop within our physical body in this earthly world in accordance with the heavenly principle.

Dragonflies begin their lives by swimming in water during their larval stage, then come up to the earth and crawl about for a while. Finally they are able to fly around and prey on bugs they never would have imagined eating when they were crawling on the ground. They flutter about freely, thinking the whole universe is their stage.

There are many insects that go through these three stages of life. In general, insects have wings. They go through their lives living in the water, on land and in the air. Yet do human beings, who are called the lords of creation, have wings? We have a set of wings that are of a higher dimension. Death is the blessed gateway to our second birth. What is the meaning of death? Earthly life, the time of living in air, parallels the time of swimming in the womb. We are living in a wrapping cloth of air. Death is nothing special; it is only our rebirth into the third fife. That moment of transition is what we call death.

Section 4.The central point between the two worlds

Iimagine you must be very curious about the spirit world. There are many religions in the world; their purpose is to guide us to the world of eternal life, where we can live together with God. That eternal spirit world is the destination of religion. However, what has become of religion today? It is on the decline. We have entered an era in which people are concluding that religion is a man-made moral idea, appealing only to the weak and unnecessary for everyone else.

Even Christianity, the central religion, has declined. America represents all the Christian nations of the world, yet many people who grew up in American Christian homes have lost their faith and are living according to their own ways. Why are even Christians abandoning their religion, which idealizes Heaven, the dwelling place of God, who is the center of the world and all ideals?

There are three reasons. First, we do not have a clear understanding of the existence of the spirit world. We have the innate capacity of comparison, and we naturally seek to abandon a bad situation in favor of a better one. If we understood the higher-dimensional realms of greater value in the spirit world, we would seek them out. This is original human nature.

Second, we do not really know God. Our connection with God was severed as a result of the Fall, and we have been living as orphans.

Third, we do not grasp the central importance of love, which binds us to both God and the spirit world. We do not clearly know these three points. Even those who know of God and the spirit world do not fully understand that it is a world centered on love.

In a place of love, you are happy to go up or down and even to stay in the middle. Does a wife dislike her husband if he has a higher position in society than she has? Does a husband dislike his wife if her social standing is lower than his? When you are one with each other, you can go anywhere, from below to above, from above to below; you can even stay in the middle. There are no restraints. This is the reason that many people in the world are saying, “This world needs to become one. It ought to be united. It must become a world of peace.”

It is the same for both the spirit world and the earthly world, and for spiritual and physical beings. God and His love are central to both worlds. But fallen people do not recognize this.

We have a mind and a body, and there are differences between these two. They exist in different dimensions. The mind differs from the spirit world. We speak of the spirit and earthly worlds in terms of God’s love. Accordingly, for these two to create oneness, God must be involved. Without God’s love, the spirit world cannot exist. It is linked to God.

People may be confused and think that the mind is the spirit. The mind is not a part of the spirit world. Due to the Fall, the mind does not have a relationship with the spirit world. It may be easier for you to understand if you think of the mind of fallen human beings as a person who has no bones in his body. The mind of a fallen person has a form like a human body that has no bones.

The spirit has a body-like element and a mind-like element. The part that is like the mind of the spirit is immersed in the spirit world. It always maintains a relationship with God. The mind-like element of the spirit does not come into being without a relationship with God. It is important to understand that spirit and mind are two different things. The fallen mind has no relationship with God. He has departed from it. God can neither relate to the fallen mind nor exercise His direct dominion over it. Your mind changes, going one way and then another, but spirit beings are not like this, nor is the spirit world. They have one eternal goal, toward goodness, and move steadily in that direction. Why is this so? It is because spiritually mature beings stand on God’s side. The mind that resides within us as fallen human beings vacillates.

What is the spirit mind? I am sure you know this from the Divine Principle. It is the union of mind and spirit, and it is moving toward a new goal. It is a motivational mind, which makes it possible for us to become our ideal selves by uniting with our conscience, centered on God. Without a spirit mind we would be unable to connect to the spirit world or to true love.

When the spirit mind sprouts up in us, our body is happy to unite with it. Everything automatically begins to unite. The biggest problem for people until now has been the separation of our mind and body. However, when spiritual energy dwells within us and engenders the awakening of our spirit mind, our mind and body naturally unite. Unless this type of revolution occurs, unless we discover the origin that can rectify everything from the root, we have no way to find the ideal. There is no result without a motivating cause. The purpose of religion is to implant a spirit mind within us. There are many religions centered on the spirit mind. These appear in all sorts of different forms.

God is a majestic being, central to both the spirit and earthly worlds, which are meant to become as one. Because true love was never manifested, the spirit world and physical world could not become as one body. This caused the separation between the human mind and body. Also, because true love was never established, there is a separation between religion and politics.

Everything comes together as one when true love is at the center. Everything—the individual, family, society, nation, world and cosmos—is linked. We have to make it so with our own hands. Otherwise we cannot inherit God’s original kingdom in heaven and on earth. How do we bring about harmony between the spirit and earthly worlds? We have to unite them with true love.

Eighty percent of the world’s population does not know about the spirit world. Even some religious believers are not really sure whether there is a spirit world or if God really exists. However, the spirit world does exist. If there were a wealthy man who was willing to invest his entire fortune in creating a place of happiness for himself, we can imagine what a wonderful garden he would build. Then what kind of place would God, the Creator of heaven and earth, create as His dwelling place?

The spirit world is a world of beauty beyond our imagination. You could stare at just one part of it for a thousand years and never grow tired of it. The world’s most prized possessions are nothing in comparison to the spirit world. Therefore, I do not want to own things on this earth. If you were to force me to say which I would prefer, I would say this earthly world does not conform to my purpose and I would rather go to the spirit world.

Most people do not think about the spirit world. They were born, so they live with their parents and take care of their families. They think they will just go on living the life they were born to. What is at the center of such lives? It is all about eating and supporting themselves. People consider food, shelter and clothing to be the most important things in life.

How to support themselves, how to feed themselves, how to clothe themselves—these are the central issues for most people. Of course, human relationships include aspects of morality that enable people to improve, develop and find satisfaction together. The standard of that morality varies, however, among different races and nations. Moral standards and social systems all vary in accordance with the world’s diverse cultural backgrounds.

From this perspective, we see that there is a huge difference between the original vision and standard that God wants us to attain, and the standard of ethics and morality that people today set for themselves. This must be corrected. Where are we supposed to go after being born and living our lives here, based on the original standard? People are not clear about this; they do not know whether there is a spirit world and whether God exists.

However, people who have studied the Principle clearly know that the spirit world exists. They do not just believe it; they know it. Why is this? They know it through coundess spiritual experiences. The global foundation of the Unification Church was built through a process that included many spiritual experiences. People who know the Principle are in a position where they cannot say that the spirit world does not exist.

Once we know the Principle, what path do we follow? We must follow the path that God desires for us, the path of His Will. But what is God’s Will? There is a path for an individual, and a path for a family. There are also paths for the society, nation, world and spirit world. I am the expert on this. The spirit world definitely exists.

Why is it important that we know of the existence of God and of the spirit world? Some people may think that, even if God exists, they have nothing to do with Him, but they are wrong. To say, “Even if there is a spirit world, it has nothing to do with me,” would be like a person claiming he is a member of a family, but has no need of his country or of the world.

If there were a greater God and a bigger spirit world, we would surely want to have a relationship with those greater entities. But just having a relationship is not enough. What would we do once we had a relationship? We would have to unite and move together toward the same goal.

The Apostle Paul’s experience of seeing the third heaven of the spirit world became the driving force empowering him in his missionary activities for fourteen years. Do you understand this? You need to have such experiences. The same is true for me.

Ido not fear death. What made me this way? Love did. No matter how many times Iam put in jail, Ican digest all that, just as Ihave digested and overcome all the opposition that has surrounded me. Iam overcoming all this with my own hands.

Section 5. How the spirit world was created

The spirit world is equivalent to the angelic world. With regard to the spirit world, our world today is in the same position as at the time of Adam and Eve. God created the spirit world before creating Adam and Eve. Since Satan’s world came to exist because the spirit world went against God’s Will, that world will be restored only after it welcomes God’s Will. Also, the Lord cannot come to the earthly world until the spirit world is subjugated. That is why members of the Unification Church have worked tirelessly until today to end the discord with the spirit world and, consequently, the spirit world has been helping the Unification Church.

Where is the spirit world? It is in your bodies. You go around carrying the spirit world on your shoulders, attending it. There is no escaping it.

The spirit world certainly exists. It exists for this physical world, and this world exists for the sake of the eternal world. People may ask, “Where in the world is God? Can there be a God in this world? Where is the spirit world?” God’s dwelling place is the spirit world.

If, after seventy or eighty years on earth, that were the end of our life, we really would have nothing to worry about. But since we will be living eternally, it is a different story. So if we agree that the spirit world exists and that we will go there after death, what will we take along when we go there? Those who have not practiced true love in their lifetimes will not adjust well in the spirit world. The spirit world is vast. You may not know this, but it is a vast world without boundaries.

The contemporary interest in electricity and space exploration will open people’s minds to the idea of an ideal world of love. The vast spirit world is filled with the electricity of love. With the electricity of love there is nothing we cannot do. Hence, we can say that the spirit world is a realm we are meant to govern through our thoughts and feelings.

Then what is the spirit world? It is a place made up of that which is eternal. It is the world of harmony, where everything is filled with love. Thus, this universe goes into operation just by the push of a love button.

What is God’s kingdom on earth? It is the place where all the valves of love can be opened. Then what about the kingdom of God in heaven? It is the place where all the valves of true love can be opened.

All you have to do is maintain a loving heart and tug on the rope of love, and everything will come to you. When you push it back, it goes backward; when you pull it sideways, it moves sideways. You can steer it any way you like. It does not resist; it moves automatically.

So we arrive at the concept that the spirit world is the place filled with the air of love. If the God of love wants to feed all humanity at once and to make us happy, says, “Let there be food,” then food will appear.

You eat the food of love in the spirit world. People look at each other with eyes of love. There are no words to express the mystery of the spirit world. The more you hear, the more you want to hear. There is no concept there of being sleepy or tired. The spirit world is the place filled with the electricity of love. People today try to link everything to love. Why is that? This is to be in rhythm with the spirit world. Since the spirit world operates in this way, existing beings naturally respond to it. They cannot abandon that position.

When you see me in your dreams, Iappear to you through the waves of God’s love. For that to happen, there can be no self. You need to create a vacuum, and then a realm of resonance. You become like pure gold, which has low resistance. Why do we consider gold to be treasure? Gold is pure, it does not contain any other elements, and it has a low level of resistance. You need to become like pure gold.